It's actually wholesome that early internet most famous meme/ viral video is a song about "never giving someone up and never letting them down"
Rick roll is hardly early internet.
Source, im old
Yeah, but goatse isn't very wholesome. Let the kid believe :P
Actually it was found that Rick roll was originally inspired by an old Internet video dated back to the late 70s. They did a research on that if you're interested.
Knew what "a research" was linking to, but I clicked it anyway.
I got an ad before the video, ffs. My day is ruined.
Ope, link preview coming in clutch.
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Why, when I saw my first decapitation video I was merely a boy!
2007 wasn’t early internet lol.
Early internet’s most famous meme was probably either hamster dance or dancing baby. All Your Base wasn’t long after.
That toaster cat shitting rainbows!
Edit or the beep beep frog with the schlong
Edit edit: guess that last one was a whole video...not a meme
I mean there were even fax machine "memes". Checkout Faxlore if you weren't around at the time.
Thank you, I had forgotten some of the memes and jokes from that era.
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even this is pretty late-stage flash content. We must go deeper.
I miss the days of looping flash videos. The Badger Song, The Llama Song, Magical Trevor, etc. Those defined my childhood.
Here's a llama, there's a llama and another little llama
For sure dancing baby. Was shared as an attachment on emails even before YouTube was a thing
Nuhuh.
True early internet meme was pics from Madonna's coffee table book. Iykyk.
Ron Livingston playing piano as a cat.
He was imitating this video which went viral before his.
Like many other commenters, I wouldn't consider rickrolling to be "early internet." First of all it's a mutation of the duckroll meme, and dates as late as 2007. Trogdor predates rickrolling by 5 years.
But, I do have to say, I appreciate the rickroll as the internet's official prank. Tricking someone into watching a slightly cheesy but inoffensive music video to an actually pretty good song about being a faithful lover is pretty okay.
It's better than when a link could bring you to meatspin, lemon party, or Goatse
"HEY EVERYBODY I'M LOOKING AT GAY PORN."
Don't forget tubgirl!
Two girls one cup. That would be a horrible prank.
Consummate V's!!!!!
Youtube isn't the early internet friend.
I still remember the first time someone told me about YouTube. I thought they were saying U2, the bad, and was really confused.
Fuck I'm old.
Going off the comments, did we all just get trolled hard?
Just for a bit of context I was "surfing the internet" in 1994 via Gopher, an early alternative to the web as we know it now and I used it primarily to find and download apps stored on computers connected to the internet.
In 1995 I was using the Mosaic browser and later Netscape to surf the World Wide Web mostly via webrings that were individual webpages that had links to other wepages of similar content linked to them.
I don't recall and am not aware of anything that would resemble a meme from that time? This is a year or so before Dancing Baby which is usually considered the first viral video and even then that was originally shared via email forwards.
This is the moment to mention that Rick Astley still makes music and just released a new song, it's called Never gonna stop. I'm not kidding, also, it's a banger.
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Rick Astley is an amazing vocalist, for real. I've heard some of his more recent stuff, and it's very good.
With that being said, I'm still not clicking that link
Dancing baby is the early internet meme.
I hate that baby!
Lol dude what the fuck? That is not early Internet. That's a good decade and a half past early Internet.
My spoon is too big
That was not early internet.
"You wouldn't get this from any other guy" is less wholesome and more incel, TBF.
Hah. "early internet." Just like how Video Games' first foray into existence was in 2003 with Knights of the Old Republic. Before then, nothing existed.
I remember a different internet. I thought the most viral stuff was a guy shoving a glass jar into his ass which then broke. And we all nervously laughed as he pulled glass out of his now pissing bloody sphincter. Or two girls puking and shitting into a cup which they drink. Or cake farts. Lemon parties. Goatse. Or just ddos random sites something something fire some space lazer ion cannon thing occupy!
Or meat spinning
Oh, you spin me right round
Memes are as old as humanity, so Internet memes are as old as the Internet, starting ca. 1993.
What about the memes that South Park made fun of years ago?
Star Wars kid
Dramatic look gopher
Tron guy
Etc.